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Bunning hurls high and hard at Wolfowitz
Inside Washington
U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning is one of the Bush administration's most loyal backers in the Senate, voting the White House's way 94 percent of the time last year, according to Congressional Quarterly.
But you wouldn't have known it from the Senate Budget Committee hearing this month, when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had to defend the administration's spending proposals.
"I want to know how you can justify the $200 million ... in economic and military aid to Jordan when Jordan was fighting against us in the first Gulf War," the Southgate Republican asked Wolfowitz.
"My son happened to be in that war and flying over Kuwait at the time, and we could not get Jordan's cooperation to stop the (Iraqi) supplies coming in from Jordan." (Bunning's son, Bill Bunning, served on Air Force crews that were flying EF-111s during that war.)
Wolfowitz's response: Yes, Jordan was an "unfriendly neutral" during the Gulf War. But things have changed.
Bunning wasn't finished. How about those 250,000 Iraqi troops that the U.S. had supposedly trained?
"That's what we were told. And unfortunately, they cut and ran during certain attacks and we finally found out that there were about 125,000 or less that we could depend on," Bunning groused.
But Bunning saved his real ire for some local Kentucky complaints.
He complained that the Defense Department had cut funding for destroying chemical weapons at the Bluegrass Army Depot in Richmond, near Lexington. Instead, the Pentagon requested more money for further research - and only $33 million at that, which Bunning denounced as "peanuts."
"You know how long we've been researching the destruction of those weapons?" Bunning asked.
"We have a treaty to get rid of them by 2012. ... Now, go down to Richmond, Ky., and Lexington, Ky., and tell those people that those 50,000 rockets that have nerve gas, that are corroding, that you're not going to be able to get rid of them in time to meet the treaty obligations."
"I would invite you to come with me to the Bluegrass Army Depot and walk through it," Bunning said.
"I'd be happy to do that, sir," Wolfowitz said.
"And you would understand how urgent it is to get rid of those things properly," said Bunning.
"Let's do that," Wolfowitz said. No visit has been set, said Bunning spokesman Mike Reynard.